twiztor

On 4/20/2024 at 6:49 AM, fcgamer said:

As a whole, I really dislike cover bands. In my opinion, the performance would be so much more memorable if these musicians decided to slowly start introducing their own music into the set, and then do originals, working their way up to all original music with the occasional cover.

i've been listening to Sublime a lot lately and this same thought has been popping up in my head. There's a Sublime tribute band called Badfish that has been putting on shows and touring since 2001. I'm amazed that, 20+ years now, they've never released an original song. 

UPDATE: i googled the band, just to make sure i wasn't missing anything, and apparently they released their first original song back in December! https://thepier.org/badfish-release-first-ever-original-music-with-high-with-you-featuring-little-stranger/ Check it out: 

1221, with BBD/RHCP being the toughest choice. 

On 4/6/2024 at 9:09 AM, bag said:

Jet Force Gemini had an arcade or 2 you could interact with and play. It's been a long time since I played the game, don't remember much. 

Rare also used this trick with Donkey Kong 64, although it was only to play the original DK. i remember thinking that was so awesome back in the day.

On 4/8/2024 at 9:57 AM, T-Pac said:

I remember this section in Pokemon (Gold?) that was like a puzzle where you had to figure out how to slide across ice into stationary boulders in order to get to the other side of a cave.

It wasn't a separate "mini-game" or anything, but it was a really fun departure from the standard RPG gameplay everywhere else.

 to me, that seemed like a throwback to Mole Mania, as a lot of those puzzles require similar boulder sliding. BTW, if you haven't played that GameBoy game, i highly recommend it.

15 hours ago, avatar! said:

By the way, what are people's favorite 80s-inspired video games? The two I've really played and enjoyed are --

Infernax
Saturday Morning RPG

Retro City Rampage is high on my list, but the AVGN game probably steals my top spot. 

this, as a movie on its own, is pretty mediocre.

that being said, if you're just watching it as a movie, you're doing it wrong. This was made as a social commentary for the counter culture. it's about taking taboo subjects and flaying them wide open for all to see. for exposing the undercurrent of weird that flows through life, generally unseen. 

you have to remember, most movies that came out before this one were very traditional. This movie is a subversion of everything- family values, sex/gender roles, all that "traditional" stuff. THAT is why it is held up with such reverence. It was SO different from what you would normally see. It gave people a chance to embrace the "weird".

plus, the songs ROCK! Science Fiction, Sweet Transvestite, Time Warp, I Can Make You A Man, Touch Me, and the more traditional Hot Patootie/Bless My Soul are all 10/10 or damn close.

the only movie that makes me bawl like a baby is Boyz N the Hood.

but yeah, Jurassic Bark from Futurama is the saddest thing in existence. 

i was just testing out a copy of 'You Don't Know Jack' that i bought for a dollar and played a quick single player game. i saw credits and made the (empty) high score list. does that count?

4 is my favorite. It's when it finally feels put together. The ability to both charge and slide makes it seem complete. Is it even a Mega Man game if you're not holding the B button for whatever the next screen may or may not have in store for you?

1 is the starter pack. 
2 is very much a fully formed version of 1. 
3 feels mostly like MM2 DLC. more of what came before. btw, Snake Man's stage is probably my favorite backgrounds of the entire series.

5 feels very "same-y". Not a knock, it just doesn't do anything that sets it apart.
6 feels like it's trying to return to form, and the new Rush options are interesting, but doesn't quite capitalize or mix it up enough.

i set myself a limit. say, one game a month, or something similar. I hold to it for the first month. maybe two. And then my impulsive side wins out and i end up paying the going rate. I CAN ONLY HOLD OUT SO LONG!

1. a 6-person X-Men arcade cabinet
2. a side-by-side Skee-ball cabinet
3. i don't know the name of this, but my local barcade had a 4-person Pac-Man cab where you tried to eat each other. It was always a freaking awesome time. They've since replaced it to one that is less fun, but i want that game!
4. Mr. Gimmick NES game (US release. yes, i know. but this is my hypothetical want list!)
5. [you know, my mind's blanking at the moment. reserved to maybe come back to later!]

my list is mostly games that i WANT, but don't have now, mainly due to space issues. So before i "complete my collection", i'm going to need a bigger place to house them all!

i wouldn't say i'm "creating new rabbit holes" of which to build my collection, but i also concede that nothing that i'm collecting is brand new. Like a few other people have said, i collect what i like. 

For me, it started with series. i grew up owning Mega Man 3 and 6. I rented 2 and 4 regularly. When i started buying games, some of the first games i tracked down were Mega Man 1, 2, 4, and 5. I have a similar story for Adventure Island, and Double Dragon, and Ninja Gaiden. Along the way, i admitted to myself that i was a Nintendo fanboy, so wanted to grab all their first party titles. That took me across a lot more systems (and series). Then i found that i really enjoyed the stuff on the quirkier side of gaming. ROB, with his games and accessories. Virtual Boy (fullset, even later including interesting homebrews). 32x (fullset). Nintendo Power's Canadian cousin, Nintendo Power Flash (i'm not even Canadian! but i knew i had to snatch up all of these issues). the Valiant Nintendo Comic Series line. 

i certainly don't think that i'm a "follower". I've been discovering these games and enjoying the journey along the way. Most of the time, i think i've probably brought my game collecting journey to its completion. But then i find out about another game that i NEED to have (last week, it was the game Ehrgeiz for PS1. a 3d fighting game featuring FF7 characters? Plus a single player adventure quest? How did this not cross my path 20 years ago?!?). So there's always new branches to explore. But if somebody tried to label my as a "follower" because i didn't 'discover an entirely new subset that nobody had considered before', then that person has too much judge-y time on their hands.

voted Knickerbockers, although Badfinger is a close 2nd. 

i know technically this is McCartney & Wings, but you missed a perfect opportunity to post this song from the Role Models soundtrack:

"Are you sure that isn't Wings?"
"no, it's Not Wings"

i received my copy of Trip World (GBA) early this month, around Feb 6th. THE NEXT WEEK, i got an email letting me know that my order had shipped. it was about a week later that i got a confirmation email that it had delivered. First time i've received an item before it shipped. 

On 2/20/2024 at 12:57 AM, JamesRobot said:

Dig it! Got my collection back.  Mom's been had it about 20 years.  Here's a tease.  OG Ice Ice Baby! 

very cool! i would probably pick this up if i saw it locally.

did you know that To The Extreme (the Vanilla Ice record that Ice Ice Baby was on) didn't get a vinyl release in the US?

i should probably watch this one. 

played this one for the first time last year (2 years ago? i don't remember exactly). I had just played through 1-3&K, so the storyline and mechanics were fresh in my mind. I thought the time travel gimmick was a really cool idea and was interested in the extra exploration it opened up. But in practice, it didn't really seem to make much of a difference. I started out making a point to achieve the "good future" for every stage, but abandoned that about halfway through when i lost interest. Once i stopped, the game lost all interest and felt very easy and straightforward. 

overall, i liked the game, but the time gimmick didn't live up to its potential, so it just ended up feeling unnecessary. 3&K felt bigger and better. 2 is IMO the perfect balance for the series. 1 is fine. 

i scored this a 6.

so, usually hearing about other peoples' dreams is a chore. There's rarely a coherent plotline, and it's filled with a lot of bad descriptions, like "it was my house, but it wasn't MY house, you know?" But i had a dream last night that i think intersects with our shared interest. Feel free to share your own as well.

So, in this dream, specific bundles of Wii consoles came with cardboard/paper sleeves. Like the artwork for Wii games, but about an inch shorter. They were still made to more or less be used as the artwork that games already come with. They were more blue, so definitely not just the standard artwork inserts. Anyway, these console bundles came with a thick stack of them- say 30-40ish, all sealed like a brick. The games these correlated with were varied- lots of stuff like Wii Play and Wii Music, but also other first party titles like New Super Mario Bros. So, the pack-in game (an original game) let you unlock these games to play on your Wii. But here's the catch- once you unlocked these games, you also "unlocked" the disc. Sort of like a print-on-demand service, you got an actual disc of the game. Which explains why you also got the artwork with the console. So there was this entire subset of collectors trying to get an unopened stack of these artwork bundles, but also an argument over whether it was more "pure" to keep the artwork itself unopened, or to have the full set of games, with the artwork and put into reused Wii cases.

it was a dumb dream, but i thought it might resonate with some of us.

4 hours ago, LeatherRebel5150 said:

I went with the end of N64 as my cutoff. So I have issues 1-150. I could never stand the Gamecube. I think 150 is the one that has Luigi on the cover that says “It’s here” on the cover or something like that. Or it’s the last one that has the logo on the corner showing it covered something N64 related. I forget.

Ive always been meaning to see if there was an issue that covered Tony Hawk 3 for N64 since that came out much later than issue 150 but haven’t gotten around to it

i really loved the n64 when it came out and was OBSESSED with NP's coverage of the system. I expect that i will eventually end up with 1-150 as well for that very reason. I currently only have 1-90 or so (plus the Fun Club newsletters and the Nintendo Power Flash Canadian newsletters).

it's been years since i played this, but i was on a mission to unlock and defeat Donkey Kong. pretty sure i never was able to beat him. fun game, and yeah i agree that the general game is easier than the NES version, but the higher end difficulty stuff can be pretty brutal.

5 hours ago, AirVillain said:

Can anyone help me with some pricing?

Although I don't have pictures.... there's a copy of Issue #1 at a local store, ungraded.

Not in great shape but pretty decent.

Is it stupid to ask what everyone thinks is a "good price" for it without providing pictures? I'm in Canada as well...

Haha, shit.... I should have looked closer at it's condition.... my bad. They have a bunch of early ones. 1, 2, 3....

last time i was paying attention, the going rate for #1 in decent shape (with the poster) was about $100 US. But that's been a few years so has probably gone up. most of the other early issues were quite a bit less expensive. With a little looking, $20 would secure you most of them. i think #2 still held a premium, but significantly less than #1. Obviously VERY beneficial to grab lots when buying the early mags.

if this gets a physical release i will probably scoop it up. looks like a frustratingly difficult good time.

22 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

I’m just going by numbers though if it’s on the fence I’ll take some influence from the description.

same here. i think the literary description lines up pretty well with the numbers in general. i start with the numerical and adjust based on secription if need be. like @ZeldaFreaki also think in terms of .5s and it does help with the rounding.

ah! another Iowan! feel free to hit me up if you roll through Dubuque.

welcome. your collection and setup are incredible. nice work!! 

Super Princess Peach (Nintendo DS)

i'd heard surprisingly little about this Mario spinoff title, but it caught my attention for being the only game to star Ms. Toadstool (until the upcoming Switch game releases).

i enjoyed this game, but it's pretty shallow as far as platforming games go.  interesting if underutilized emotion mechanics. level design that wasn't as intuitive as i expected (you have to "rescue" all 3 Toads in each stage, but it's generally unclear if a warp pipe/door is the actual path forward or a side path to find said Toad. i had to do a decent amount of backtracking). difficulty is nonexistent (akin to the mainline Kirby games).

post-game opens up new stages. haven't given them a play, but i'm vaguely interested. i mainly played this during my downtime at work, knocking out 1 world per day. a decent time killer, but significantly less addicting than the Mario vs DK series.

wow, there's a lot of high scores being posted here. i watched it when it was fairly new, so ~20 years ago (!?!) but i found it quite boring. won't give it a rating since i don't remember anything about it really. Maybe i was just in the wrong mindset? I definitely remember being very disappointed and bored.